by Judith Frank
A package from her Israeli grandparents had arrived a few days ago, and Daniel had hidden it till now: it contained bags of Bamba and Bisli and Israeli chocolate and biscuits. There was quick, intense negotiation: Did she have to share with Rafi and Noam, even though it was her birthday? She got a lecture about how, even though she technically didn’t have to, it would be nice of her to share, and she and Daniel reached a compromise: She would split one bag of Bisli with the other kids. She ripped open the bag and counted out four for Noam, and while she kept a sharp eye on how many Rafi took, they gorged on the primordial flavors of home.
AFTER THE KIDS HAD gone to bed and his parents to their hotel, Daniel came into the bedroom, where Matt was sprawled on the bed, watching TV. He lay down next to him, moved into the crook of his arm. “Hi,” Matt said.
“Hi.” Daniel took a deep breath and let it out, closed his eyes and curled against Matt, his knee sliding over his legs. Matt patted his arm absently.
It was the laziest feeling, Daniel’s head light and tingly, his prick pressing against his jeans, his legs weightless. He moved his hand onto Matt’s thigh and ran it lightly up to his crotch, touching his jeans very very lightly. “Phew, what a relief,” he murmured.
Matt raised an eyebrow. “What, getting through the birthday?”
Daniel rose and leaned over him, touched his lips with his, then pressed harder. Matt felt the familiar gentle query of his tongue, breathed in the familiar smell of his breath, which still—after all this!—triggered all kinds of pheromonal happiness, and thought about a silly conversation they’d had when they’d started sleeping together, a conversation that had led through the giddy, winding road of older man/younger man teasing, to his giving Daniel an A-minus grade as a kisser. Daniel had reared back in laughing indignation, and asked, his lashes still lazy from the kiss, “Why, pray tell, the minus?”
“Pray tell?” Matt said. “Okay, that just brought you down to a B-plus.”
They’d been kneeling on the bed, undressing each other, and Daniel sat back on his haunches with a haughty look. His shirt was unbuttoned, half-revealing the delicate brush of dark hair around his nipples, the cleft between his breasts, and his surprising, disarming, little-boy belly button. “You need to modulate better between wet and dry,” Matt said, with the air of the connoisseur. He himself was a world-class kisser, thank you very much.
Now Daniel’s hands were in Matt’s hair, and he felt himself enormously touched and disquieted. The house was quiet, other than the slurp of the dog washing himself on the floor and static from the baby monitor. Matt’s mind began to race through all the things he knew about what was safe and what wasn’t, wondering if he could limit this to oral sex, thinking about all the nicks and cuts on their dry winter hands. He could do that, and not tell Daniel.
But when Daniel said, making light of it, “Do you still remember how to do it?” he imagined doing it without telling him, with a condom; he imagined—well, all of it, the whole sweaty, teary, exultant thing, up to the point of Daniel curling up and passing out. He swiftly tried on the idea that in not volunteering the information, he wouldn’t be exactly lying to Daniel, the kind of lame sophistry that had served him pretty well when he was younger, and a jerk. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t tell him. Even though Daniel had pushed him to the last extremity by denying him all this time and making him feel like shit for wanting him in the first place, and even though he, Matt, deserved to be cut a ton of slack for performing sensationally well under the pressure of this new life. He defied anyone to have done a better job as a partner and a parent! But after all they’d been through, it just seemed tawdry to lie.
Crap, after all these months, who knew that Daniel would suddenly be horny?
“Dan,” he murmured. “Honey.” He closed his eyes, steeling himself, and turned on the light to Daniel’s blinking, rosy, hungry face.
Matt struggled to a sitting position. “Daniel,” he said.
Daniel murmured, ran his hand up Matt’s chest under his T-shirt.
Matt clasped his hand, over his shirt. “Honey.” The word came out hoarse, so he cleared his throat and said it again; this time, as he pressed it out of his throat, it came out loud and harsh. It made Daniel sit up and look at him, his face questioning and a little irritated.
“I don’t know how to say this,” Matt said.
Daniel was quiet, waiting.
Matt swallowed, feeling blood beat against his face. “It’s a really hard thing to say,” he said.
Daniel’s face grew alarmed. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“No!”
“Phew,” Daniel said.
“But this might make you want to break up with me.”
Daniel sighed. “Then will you just tell me? What, did you bareback or something?”
“Yes,” Matt said.
Daniel snorted, then, seeing Matt’s face, grew serious. “Seriously?”
Matt nodded, then rushed to add, “Well, it wasn’t really barebacking—the condom broke.”
Daniel was bewildered. “Where?”
“At a party.”
The words were so strange, it took Daniel some minutes to understand what Matt was saying. At a party—what on earth?—it still felt theoretical, as if his mind was testing what it would feel like to hear those words and to attach them to an event. Then his face grew hot, as he felt the rejection, the sheer No, I won’t response to his advance that he heard, primitively, as No, go away, disgusting, it’s not you I want, it’s someone else. Mortified, he pushed himself away and went into the bathroom and closed the door. Matt pulled the covers over his knees, tense and watchful, only half-resigned to the anger he knew he deserved and was trying to get ready to absorb. His bare feet were cold.
Noam gave out a cry, magnified to a yowl by the monitor. Matt got out of bed, grabbed two pacifiers from the dresser, and went down to his bedroom, where he put one in Noam’s mouth and one in his hand. These days Noam slept with three pacifiers, two stuffed dogs, and his special blanket, and Matt wondered if he was waking more often because he had trouble hanging on to all of them at once. On the way out, Matt stepped on two of the pacifiers that had made their way out of the crib, and took them back into the bedroom, where he determined to sit and wait for Daniel to emerge and respond.
Daniel was sitting on the toilet with his head in his hands, his mind blank. It seemed as if it would take a tremendous effort to make it produce a thought, and that it just wasn’t worth the effort. He’d think about it after his parents left. He knew that it was bad, very bad; he could also sense, if not quite make contact with, the minor-key pleasure of being aggrieved and in the right. Other than that, all he could feel was his left leg getting numb. And his swollen, itchy eyes.
Matt turned on the TV, but without the sound, so Daniel wouldn’t accuse him of checking out during a fight. He held the remote with his thumb on the power switch, ready to turn it off the moment he saw the bathroom doorknob turn. Twenty minutes passed, and a new sitcom cycle began, and still Daniel hadn’t emerged. “Daniel?” he called, then, when there was no answer, he went to the door and slowly turned the knob.
Daniel was still sitting on the toilet, sleeping.
Matt roused him and led him to the bed, turned back the covers for him. “Don’t touch me,” Daniel mumbled, getting into bed and curling himself into a ball facing away from Matt’s side.
Matt awoke the next morning with the knowledge that he’d have to face Daniel’s wrath, not to mention the last morning of Sam and Lydia’s visit; he groaned and rose to get the baby’s bottle. Daniel got up and got into the shower, and all through breakfast—which was taken up by Lydia’s exclamations of “I’m going to miss you so much!” and Gal’s “I’m going to miss you even more!”—he gave him the cold shoulder. Matt wanted to talk about it—they needed to—but they couldn’t yet, certainly not till Lydia and Sam had left.
After they’d all left the house in a flurry of kiss
es and “I love you’s,” Matt went upstairs to work. He sat down and booted up his computer, and instead of opening his design software, opened the word processor and began composing an email message to Daniel. He caught a whiff of Lydia’s scent on him from their good-bye hug. Maybe he’d send the message, maybe he wouldn’t, he thought; but he had to write it.
“Daniel,” he began:
I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what I did. I knew the minute I got back home that I’d done one of the worst things I’ve ever done. I feel like a huge hypocrite, and a terrible partner. I want to explain how it happened, but I don’t think you’d particularly want to hear about it. If I’m wrong about that, let me know.
It’s just, I love and miss you so much, and the less contact I had with you, the more intense contact it seemed I needed. Okay, I just explained how it happened, when I said I wouldn’t.
He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
Anyway, I hope we can talk. I miss that too, it seems like all we talk about these days is the kids. And I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. Not right away, of course, I don’t expect that.
I love you, honey.
He sent it before he could second-guess himself, and then, exhausted, took a nap on the couch, his coffee cooling on his desk.
When he awoke he immediately checked his email; there was no response yet. He went downstairs and got himself a fresh cup of coffee, came back up and checked his email one more time before getting down to work. Over the course of the day he logged back onto his email account incessantly. He knew Daniel hadn’t responded in the morning because he had a meeting, but as the hours went by, he realized that Daniel was going to let him flap in the breeze.
MATT PICKED UP NOAM from day care, arriving home as Gal was getting off the bus. “Take off your shoes,” he said as she pushed inside, backpack sagging on her back.
“I’m starving,” she said in Hebrew.
He sat her down at the kitchen table and gave her a granola bar and a glass of milk; hair in her eyes, feet swinging, humming something tuneless, she dunked it and ate the wet parts in tiny rodent gnaws. Matt lifted Noam into his high chair and cut up a banana onto his tray, watched him mouth a piece off his palm. “Use your fingers, honey,” Matt said, picking up a piece. Noam had the small-motor coordination to do that, but still ate baby-style a lot of the time, one of the many small things that continued to make them anxious about his development. You’d better not leave me alone with these kids, he silently warned Daniel. It was something he said whenever Daniel set out for work, alongside Drive safely. But now he caught himself: Daniel was more likely to take the kids than to leave them with him. Waiting for a conversation with him was like waiting for a verdict, head spinning, mouth dry. Daniel hadn’t called, hadn’t let him know when he’d be home, and Matt had decided the only thing to do was to keep moving; if his life wasn’t going to be normal, he was going to put his head down and pretend it was.
He was cubing tofu for a stir-fry and working himself into a state when he heard the key at the door, then the clatter of keys on the counter. He was too afraid to look up. But then he heard footsteps recede: Daniel was going upstairs.
Gal drifted into the room. “I hate tofu,” she said.
“Actually, you don’t,” Matt said, his knife gliding through it. He would fry it till it was golden, add garlic and ginger and soy sauce.
At dinner, Daniel was a model of smooth parental dedication and guidance, but his eyes glided over Matt without seeing him, like skis in glassy waters. Did the kids detect the rage under that warm surface? They didn’t seem to: Gal was letting Daniel draw her out about her day at school, where one boy had gotten in trouble for calling another boy fat, and a loser.
“He should get in trouble,” Daniel said, and although Matt agreed, the words sounded ominous.
AFTER DINNER DANIEL WENT upstairs while Matt cleared up and put the dishes in the dishwasher, his mind bubbling with bad feeling. Noam had crawled out of the kitchen and into the living room, and by the time Matt had emerged from the kitchen, he found him halfway up the stairs. “Holy moly, Noam!” he cried, poking his face in between two balusters. “Look at you!”
Noam, on hands and knees, looked down at him, then raised a knee to take another step. He placed it on the very edge and it slipped off, and, flattened on his stomach, he slid down a few stairs and bumped his chin on one of the stairs. Matt ran up the steps to pick him up just as he started crying.
Daniel came running down at the sound of thumping and crying. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Can’t I leave him with you for a second?”
When Noam started to fall, Matt had been just about to follow him up. “Will you just stop it?” he snapped. “I can take care of him.”
“Obviously, you can’t! Did you just stand here watching him go higher and higher?”
“I was trying to help him feel competent.” He was patting Noam’s back and searching for a pacifier.
“Well, he’s not competent!”
“And why do you think that is?” Matt said. “Why do you think he’s not walking? It’s all the fear locked up in his body.”
“What kind of New Age crap is that?” Daniel said, taking Noam from him and cradling his head with his hand, examining his face.
“He’s fine,” Matt said.
“He’s bleeding,” Daniel said, turning him toward Matt so Matt could see the smudge of blood where Noam had bitten his lip.
Damn it. Matt followed them into the kitchen, where Daniel sat down with Noam on his lap. Matt went to the freezer and got him a frozen teething ring. “Here, honey,” he said, touching Noam’s hair. “Suck this.”
Daniel grabbed it from him before Noam could take it, tossed it in the sink, and got a different one from the freezer. Noam, squeezed on his hip, grunted and squalled.
“C’mon,” Matt said, coloring.
“Stop,” Daniel said. “I’m not fighting in front of them.”
“Who started the fight?” Matt whispered furiously.
“I’m not fighting in front of him,” he said again. “Wait till they go to sleep.”
Gal came down the stairs. “Are you fighting?” she asked with great interest.
“No,” they said.
“Okay, whatever.”
Efficiently and with careful cheerfulness, they got the kids bathed and Noam put to bed. As Daniel went into Gal’s room to tell her it was time to stop reading and turn off the light, Matt sat on the bed, waiting.
Daniel came into the room, avoiding his eyes.
“Hey,” Matt said.
Daniel sat down beside him. “Matt,” he said, looking at the hands in his lap. “This isn’t working out.”
“And by ‘this’ you mean . . . ?”
“Any of it. You living here. Our being together.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not kidding. I can’t do this anymore.”
Matt sat back on the pillows, stunned. “Why?! Because I let Noam go up the stairs?”
Daniel gave him a look. “You know why.”
Matt’s face grew hot. “Because I had unprotected sex?”
“That’s just part of it,” Daniel said. “That’s just a symptom of the whole thing. I feel that it’s not safe to have you around.”
“Oh please,” Matt said.
“Oh please?” Daniel said. “You bareback!”
“Barebacked once! The condom broke!”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “Do you realize how pathetic you sound? The condom broke?” His voice was withering. “You drive like a maniac. When you take them to the playground by yourself, I spend the whole time worrying that they’re going to kill themselves because you let them do whatever they want. I can’t handle it! If I’m the only one keeping this family safe, I’m better off doing it on my own.”
“I didn’t just let Noam go up those stairs. I was watching the whole time.” When Daniel threw another derisive look his way, he burst out, “You have to make
a calculation! You have to balance between safety and his sense of competence, autonomy.”
“Don’t condescend to me,” Daniel said. “I know that. I make those calculations all the time.”
“No, you don’t,” Matt said. “You just grab the kids and pull them back. Gal complains about it all the time! You don’t hear it, but I do.”
Daniel flushed. “I need you to get out of here.”
“We’re not even going to talk this through?”
“No,” Daniel said.
Matt stared at him. “You want to do a whole get-out-of-my-house scene instead? Can’t we do any better than that?”
“This isn’t a joke! Do I look like I’m kidding?”
He very much did not look like he was kidding, Matt thought, looking at Daniel’s haggard face and cold eyes. But he was not going to let himself panic, and damned if he was going to let Daniel see him break down. “Do you even get to kick me out of the house?” he asked.
“Yes, I do!” Daniel cried. “It’s my name, not yours, on the mortgage. My name as the kids’ guardian. Where’s your name, Matt? Where’s your fucking name?”
He spat the words while Matt looked at him, shocked, thinking that he sounded as if he’d consulted a lawyer, which made this way more serious than he’d imagined. “Dan,” Matt said. “I hear that you’re furious and very hurt, and also scared.”
“I said don’t condescend to me,” Daniel said. “Look,” he said quietly. “I can handle the sexual betrayal. It hurts, a lot, but I know I’ve turned my back on you for a long time, and I get it, fair is fair. I can get over that.” He was looking steadily at Matt. “But I can’t get over the sense of danger I feel when you’re around. I’ve been trying, but I can’t. I have no choice but to ask you to leave.”
